The Open Closed Case of the Locked Room
by Cordelia McGonagall
Summary: Detective Chief Inspector Julian Sellers is frustrated by the open case of the murder of Amelia Bones...and the new detective Hestia Jones who wants to come with him to the crime scene. Credit and thanks to J.K. Rowling for all.


**A/N: Chaser 2, Puddlemere**

 **Crime**

 **Optional Prompts included: (opening sentence) "Time was running out"**

 **(word) keyhole**

 **(dialogue) "So...what exactly is that?"**

Time was running out. Detective Chief Inspector Julian Sellers straightened his tortoiseshell-framed spectacles and took a detour around the rows of desks toward the break room, unbuttoning his shirtsleeves and rolling them as he walked. He didn't even want a cup of tea. There were days that his promotion within the Criminal Investigation Department was a reward, an acknowledgement of the brilliant successes of a young rising star, but today was not one of these days. Sellers had been frustrated all morning by the knotted ends of a baffling bureaucratic web. Cases like the one on his desk this morning went cold after a few days, and he didn't need another unsolved murder attached to what he could now consider his department. And then there was the new detective transferred to his office to distract him. Sellers liked order and routine, and Hestia Jones was neither ordinary nor orderly. He couldn't figure out what she did all day; he never saw her at her computer, and when she examined the paper files of open cases, she consumed them as if they were novels, her hand groping absently to fish a crisp out of a packet while she read. And as he was drawn, yet again, to her desk, he saw what appeared to be a stack of library books perched precariously on the corner. Without greeting her, without thinking, he lifted them by their spines to take inventory: _The Valley of Fear_ , _The Four Just Men_ , _Have His Carcase_ , and _The Hollow Man._

"Bit of light reading, Detective Jones?" he asked, replacing the books on her desk in a tidy column.

Hestia looked up at him, seemingly still lost in a thick file faded with age.

"I'm afraid not, sir. This one is a bit fiddly. I have some theories, but I'm not finished," she smiled as she slid the crisp packet towards him.

Sellers frowned at her. "I meant the novels."

"Oh! Yes," Hestia chuckled, her cheeks flushing beyond their usual pink. "I suppose you did. Locked room crimes, you see."

"I do see," he nodded. "I've read all but the last one. The rooms. Locked down on the inside with no means of escape...are you thinking you are going to use those to crack the Bones case? No pun intended," he added quickly, as he watched Hestia's face go wooden.

Hestia fastened on a smile on and forced a light laugh. "That was a clever one, sir. I'm not sure you will ever find the culprit, though," she said, quietly, as she cast her eyes down to the table and brushed stray crumbs onto the floor with the back of her hand.

"Don't you mean _we_? And do you think it was like in _Valley of Fear_? There's no moat to hide a body in, though. Just the koi pond in the garden. You know," Sellers wondered, thoughtfully, "Ms. Bones' face was so disfigured, it's entirely possible it wasn't even her face at all. We haven't been able to get the family to cooperate with DNA matching, and we've been frustrated in the search for any dental records..."

Hestia cut him off, her voice trembling slightly. "I understand you are going out to interview neighbors in that case today yourself." _How much field work has she done to be bothered by just words?_ Before Sellers' musings could form a question on his lips, she rushed him with a request. "I would like to come with you, if that is agreeable. Safer in pairs, as you say."

Sellers looked at her for a long moment. He wasn't sure why this request gave him pause. There was just something so peculiar about Detective Jones. He couldn't even understand why she'd appeared, out of nowhere, to take a desk in the back of the office, when all she seemed to do was read or follow him around. Come to think of it, he couldn't even remember whom she'd replaced, just last month. But as he sorted through this jumble of thoughts, she gazed at him evenly, her clear blue eyes patient.

"I suppose so, Detective Jones." Sellers kneaded a knot forming in his shoulder.

"Oh, do call me Hestia," she smiled in a way that Sellers thought was meant to be reassuring. _Odd._

Sellers nodded and walked back to his desk, his plans for a cup of tea forgotten.

* * *

"We've been to this house twice..." _Was it twice? Had it been more?_ Sellers pulled out his notebook and flipped through it, trying to hide his confusion. _Later. I will look later._ He stuffed the notebook back in the inside pocket of his blazer. "I think this is the first time I've noticed that there aren't electrical or gas lines to the house. See?" he pointed up at the neighbor's house. "They should be there, and a pipe there. And they aren't." He pointed back to the quiet cottage mournfully decorated in yellow police tape, its flapping ends making the only noise Sellers could hear on the still street.

Hestia wiggled her hands in the pocket of her coat and chewed her lip. She looked at the man next to her skeptically.

"Detective Chief Inspector Sellers, are you suggesting that she doesn't have" - she said the next word carefully - " _electricity_ or gas, and that this lack of electricity or gas played a role in her death? Or are we perhaps just wasting our time here?" Her voice had a frustrated edge to it that Sellers had not yet heard, and it jolted him forward.

"No, no. Of course not, Hestia." He eyed her left hand, which was clenching and flexing in the deep pocket of her wool cape coat. "I suppose you are cold. The, uh, weather is quite unseasonable today. Let's go in then." He wrinkled his brow in thought and nodded her forward, lifting the tape over her head. He handed her latex gloves, which she blinked at before taking them from him and putting them on.

The entry was plain, and Sellers' eyes lingered over the faint stencils of dust on the walls where pictures had been hung and removed. "Did we take these for evidence?" he murmured to himself.

"There is no record of us having done so," Hestia replied, evenly.

He flipped open his notebook. She was correct. Nothing was recorded about removing anything, other than the body. _Strange_.

They made their way down the hall to the study. The door was now unlocked, but Sellers bent down anyway to look through the keyhole. It gave him a pinhole camera view of the desk, which was covered with brown stains to match the spatters on the walls. He put one gloved finger against the heavy door and pushed it open with a lonely creak.

Hestia slid her small frame under his outstretched arm and bolted to the far end of the room, pointedly ignoring the desk and its dried pools of blood. He went to follow her, but was stalled by what appeared to be a magnifying glass or mirror on a brass stand on the desk. He waved his hand behind it, but it didn't appear any larger. He waved his hand before it, but no reflection appeared. Images swirled vaguely in the lens.

"Say, Hestia, what do you reckon this is?"

He saw her leaning over a large atlas open on a bookstand, but his attention was broken by a rustling in the corner. He jerked around to find a mouse scampering frantically out of the room. He turned back to Hestia, who was smoothing and straightening a small bulge in her coat, apparently unruffled by the intrusion.

"Not afraid of mice, then, Hestia?"

"Mmm? No. Met an evil rat once, though." He looked at her quizzically, but let yet another strange comment go.

"Did you see that thing on her desk?" He waved his hand at the brass-framed glass. "So...what exactly is that? We lifted her prints from it the first day."

Her eyes lit on it and widened a bit. "Oh, just one of those silly executive desk toys," she murmured, biting her lip as she saw his eyes narrow.

"Far as we know, she didn't have a job."

"Maybe it was her father's."

Sellers frowned at her and set to his task. He looked out each window of the room. They had come back to the scene at the same time of day in which Amelia Bones had been murdered, according to the pathology reports. He had wanted to see what the view was like. Nodding, he motioned for Hestia to follow him outside to survey the scene from the windows looking in.

"What was so interesting about the atlas?" he asked, as they ducked back under the tape, stepping carefully through the neglected grass of the garden.

Hestia froze, momentarily. "Hmm. Yes. Well, don't you think it would be useful to know what page it was turned to?" She sounded like she was grasping for something. Sellers looked at her expectantly. She ran her fingers through her short black hair and smiled vaguely.

"Well, Hestia?"

"Mmm?"

"What page was it turned to?"

"Oh! Yes. Southwest England. Wiltshire. Probably nothing. Are you going to speak to people now?" She squared her shoulders, her hand jammed into her pocket again.

"Might as well," Sellers sighed as he took a quick look around the silent neighborhood. "The press are, well, _pressing_ us on why we've got no witnesses yet."

Hestia nodded solemnly. "That must be quite difficult for you."

"Again with the _you._ Are you part of this office, or not? The higher-ups said this transfer was permanent?" Sellers was growing annoyed with the bureaucracy, his scattered mind, and his useless, peculiar partner.

"Sorry," Hestia blushed. "Just, uh, getting used to it all."

He gave her a sideways look and walked over to the home to the north of Amelia Bones'. He knocked, but there was no answer.

"I suppose we can come back again to see..." Before his thought was finished, Hestia had stepped in front of him and pulled a thin, wooden stick from the pocket of her coat, murmuring something quietly as she waved it in front of him. Sellers blinked, and then shook his head. _I really ought to be getting more sleep. Is it possible to nod off standing up?_

Hestia touched his arm, smiling gently. "I'm glad we got those interviews." Hestia pulled a notebook from her coat and held it up, nodding. "Too bad they didn't have anything of use to tell us. Let's move on to other cases, now. That girl missing from the play park needs this office's attention more than Amelia, don't you think?"

"Of - of course, yes. I suppose we've done all we can, for now."

"Case closed," sighed Hestia. Sellers wondered why she looked so sad.


End file.
